Console and Console Gaming DiscussionIf you have something on your mind regarding the many consoles available, hand held devices or any the great games available for them, then you should use this section to chat about them.
Demos and trailers available as Sony enters next-gen market
Sony has launched the PS3 online service, with access to the PlayStation Store where consumers can download the first batch of playable demos.
The service, Sony's equivalent to Microsoft's Xbox Live and Marketplace, can be accessed for free, and lets new PS3 owners set friends lists and send messages, as well as create an avatar.
A number of playable demos are available, including Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm, NBA 07 and Formula One Championship Edition. Two full games are also available for US$ 7.99 (EUR 6.25), Cash Guns Chaos and Blast Factor.
There is also a selection of game trailers for Genji: Days of the Blade and Lair amongst others, as well as movie trailers for the much-touted Blu-ray format.
I'm quite disappointed already. I wanted to see online profiles of members and their games played and things, much like XBox Live. I fancied a good nose around >_<. Doesn't appear to be the case.
I'm quite disappointed already. I wanted to see online profiles of members and their games played and things, much like XBox Live. I fancied a good nose around >_<. Doesn't appear to be the case.
yawn. its free and is in its early stages but then again i didnt expect anything different from you.
yawn. its free and is in its early stages but then again i didnt expect anything different from you.
It should have been in it's eary stages way before the PS3 launched.
From what I here they have got their online shop spot on but the multiplayer features, friendlist and friend management is abismal. Some games don't even use your PNP tag at the mo, can't invite a friend to play unless they're already playing the game + other stuff. It leaves a lot to be desired.
Fair enough it's free but is that really an excuse for a shoddy service?
It should have been in it's eary stages way before the PS3 launched.
From what I here they have got their online shop spot on but the multiplayer features, friendlist and friend management is abismal. Some games don't even use your PNP tag at the mo, can't invite a friend to play unless they're already playing the game + other stuff. It leaves a lot to be desired.
Fair enough it's free but is that really an excuse for a shoddy service?
Be fair, why should Sonys online service be Microsofts offering but better ?
Surley they can provide there own version of an online service that they feel meets the PS3 needs more.
Anyway heres a much more detailed explanation of the online service as provided by Eurogamer :-
The debate about online gaming is over. (Although the debate about whether one can be "face to face" with a capability will perhaps linger.) While we've spent the last five years - and longer, in some cases - talking about whether online functions were actually important to games, that discussion is now at an end. Online won, although perhaps not in the way that its most loyal adherents had hoped for. Every next-gen console, and even every recent handheld console, now sports an online service out of the box; networks are becoming a core element of what we could, if we were being a bit pretentious, call "the gaming ecosystem".
That doesn't, however, mean that all games have become online games. We haven't dispensed with single-player, and we never will - for many people, compelling experiences come from storytelling or cinematics, not from deathmatch or 40-man raiding parties. It's still hard to tell just how many people actually care about online gaming in terms of actually playing with other people, but it's certainly a fairly small, albeit growing, proportion of gamers. No, the real explosion in online has come from other areas - such as the ability to get game demos, to access new content for your games, to communicate with friends, to create an online identity for yourself and even to download entirely new games or retro titles over the network. Multiplayer gaming, as distinct from online gaming, is just a small part of what is now a much larger tapestry.
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Unsurprisingly, the PC has been the pioneer in this area, just as it was the first platform to really adopt networked multiplayer gaming. You've been able to download demos, shareware games and indie software for years, and of course communicating with friends and creating an identity for yourself is core to the PC's online functionality. In the console arena, Microsoft leads the charge; the Xbox was the first games console to have a broadband, fully functional online service that gave users friends lists, notifications, voice chat and so on as a core part of the console, rather than as a strapped-on afterthought, and Xbox 360 builds on that to a massive degree with services like Xbox Live Marketplace and Xbox Live Arcade.
Sony, on the other hand, is late to the party. The PlayStation 2 didn't even have a built-in network port, let alone a network service as part of the core offering - and while isolated online titles like Final Fantasy XI proved massively popular on PS2 (in places where it was available, anyway), even the most die-hard Sony fan couldn't exactly describe the PS2's online service as a success. Certainly, it had more users than Xbox Live did last generation - but then again, the PS2 also had an installed base five times larger. In terms of ease of use, consistency of interface, and simple accessibility - not to mention software support - PS2 online was a distant second place to Xbox Live.
Third Time Lucky
Sony doesn't intend on allowing that to happen again - and despite Microsoft's five-year headstart in the online arena, the creators of PlayStation 3 are hoping that they can roll out an online service to rival Microsoft's for the launch of their console in Japan and North America in just a few scant weeks' time. A quick glance around the Internet suggests that skepticism regarding that particular goal is high - to say the least. Can a company whose online strategy in the last generation was so patchy, and their actual service so weak, really turn things around on the online front in time for the PS3's launch?
There's one way to tell for sure - actually look at the service in the flesh. For that, there's nowhere better to go than the office of Sony's worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison, located in Soho just near London's Oxford Street. Lots of Soho offices are pretty swish - but few of them have a fully functioning PlayStation 3 unit sitting under a massive HDTV screen, and hooked up to the test version of the PS3 online network which will switch over into a live service in early November when the console heads to store shelves in Japan and America.
First things first, and before we even touch the PS3, it's worth mentioning a few key factors which Sony is relying on heavily for the online service. For a start, the PS3 is designed from the ground up as an online device - unlike the PS2, which suffered from a number of major problems on that front. Building an online device requires a few major differences from an offline box - for one, it's important to be able to update your operating system, so that when you add new services or change features, you can incorporate those into the console's dashboard. On the Xbox or Xbox 360, new services are added with occasional software patches that are issued over Xbox Live; the PS2 couldn't do that, so you actually had to boot into a piece of software to do anything related to online functions. That's a clunky, messy way of doing things, and it's a big part of the reason why PS2 online was so poor.
PS3, however, has a fully upgradeable operating system, which is capable of downloading patches over the network and applying them to itself. This actually isn't new territory for Sony - the PlayStation Portable does exactly the same thing, and since that device was launched, Sony has added loads of new online features using network updates, including a fully functional web browser with Flash and RSS support. Actually, the comparisons with PSP don't stop there - we'll come back to those in a moment.
The other big difference on PS3 is that the device has a hard drive - even in its lower-spec configuration. This means that unlike the PS2, which relied on small, expensive memory cards that could easily be moved from machine to machine or even lost entirely, the console has the ability to store its configuration properly and reliably - not to mention being able to download and store loads of content. You couldn't have done that on PS2, which crippled the system from an online point of view.
Softly, Softly
Okay, so Sony is getting it right on the hardware front this time. Let's not beat around the bush, though - hardware is only a small part of the battle. Online services live or die on the strength of their software. Can I set up an account easily? Can I add and manage friends without a doctorate in computer science? How about buying content, or browsing for demos?
Let's turn the console on and find out.
Booting up a PS3 immediately reminds you of the PSP once again, because you're presented with the Cross Media Bar - that row of category icons across the middle of the screen which expand out vertically to reveal a number of new options as you hover over them. In fact, PSP users will be right at home on the PS3, since Sony's drive to ensure that it's presenting a consistent interface to users of its products means that you'll even see exactly the same icons for the same functionality. Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game... These are all familiar from the PlayStation Portable, and although each one of them undoubtedly sports additional functions here, that's not what we're here for.
No, we're really here for the new buttons on the bar. On the far left, the first thing you highlight when you log in is called User Profiles. On the far right, you've got two buttons called Network (which appeared on the PSP in a firmware update) and Friends. User Profiles looks like a little house with a smiling face on it; Network is a globe; Friends is two little houses with smiling faces sort of touching, in a platonic way. They're friends, you see. Friendly houses.
User Profiles works pretty much how you would expect it to, with a list of the different profiles stored on the console popping up in the vertical bar when this option is highlighted. Yes, this is old hat if you're an Xbox 360 user, but the PS3 will support multiple user profiles on the console - so when you turn it on, you select your own profile, and you're instantly logged into your own PlayStation Network account as well as activating all your own settings for the system. If you share a console with multiple different people, or if friends come around to play often, this is an incredibly useful feature.
Moving one left, we can make a brief stop off at Settings if you like - here, you'll find the settings page for your network, allowing you to enter exciting things like IP addresses and passwords for wireless access, using pretty much exactly the same interface as the PSP. As with other consoles (and, realistically, the majority of network devices these days), the chances are you'll never really need to tweak anything in here, as your home network probably allows devices to auto-configure themselves using DHCP. Obviously enough, the PS3 stores its settings permanently, so you won't have to re-enter them for different games or any such guff.
The One With The Single Sign-In ID
PSP users will be at home with the PS3 interface, thanks to Sony's consistency efforts.
Okay, let's scoot across the bar to the right hand side. One in from the right you find the Network button; this, essentially, is the web browser on the console. Unlike the Xbox 360, PS3 has a fully functional web browser, which according to Harrison supports a wide variety of standards right up to the complex Web 2.0 stuff you find places like Gmail using - and you can access any site on the Internet through the browser. So yes, you'll be able to browse Eurogamer on your PS3; now there's a killer app for you. Much like the PSP browser, this one will also support stuff like bookmarks and all the other usual features you'd expect from a web browser.
We're now teetering on the very right hand edge of the Cross Media Bar, looking at the Friends icon. This is where the magic happens... Is what I'd probably say, if I were working in a circus.
On the Friends vertical bar, there are two different types of icon. The first, logically enough, are friends - each of your signed-in friends has their own icon on this bar, and you select that icon to view a number of different ways of interacting with them. The other icons are those for managing your PlayStation Network account. Let's talk about those first.
At heart, there are two types of PlayStation Network account - a master account, and an associated account. The chances are that most gamers will use master accounts, but associated accounts will be especially useful for families - where, for example, a parent (who holds a master account) wants to be able to limit the amount that their kids (with associated accounts) can spend in the PlayStation Store.
Either way, you create an account through a fairly simple process - a set of screens which ask you for sign-up information, and you're done. Those screens are actually displayed using the web browser component of the operating system, so it's just like filling in a registration form on a remote website - and then you're done. Every user on PlayStation Network has a single unique ID and sign-in details, just as you'd expect on any online service - and those sign-in IDs are global, so you'll be able to add your friends to your list regardless of where in the world they are.
Oh - and it's all free, too. The only place you'll be asked to fork over a penny is when you purchase something in the PlayStation Store - all of the online services, from sign-up right through to voice and video chat, are free, as is normal multiplayer gaming. There's no equivalent of the Xbox Live Gold account, where you're expected to pay extra for a further tier of services - the only things you'll pay money for are paid-for downloadable content, or subscriptions to premium services like massively multiplayer games.
So, once you add friends, what can you do with them? Obviously enough, you can check their status and see if they're online; you can see if you have any new messages from them, and send them messages. Sending emails through the system uses the same peculiar text messaging style keypad that users of the PSP will be familiar with, which seems a bit painful at first but rapidly becomes a much faster way of entering text than the on-screen keyboards used by other systems - however, if you're not really keen on using that to enter an entire message, you can always plug in any standard USB keyboard, which will work with any text entry field anywhere on the system, as well as with the web browser.
The other options available for you in terms of friends are voice and video chat. We haven't actually seen the accessories which will be used for this in the flesh, but EyeToy and voice headset components for the system are undoubtedly set for release close to launch, and the options for those functions are right there in the operating system already.
Again, those familiar with Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 won't find this terribly surprising, but it's worth noting that the system does show you friend sign-ins and new messages received in overlays on top of the game you're currently playing - just little notification windows which pop up to tell you about something happening with your friends list. At present, however, there's no system for actually reading or responding to messages while you're still in the game, as the operating system doesn't take resources away from games in order to do that - however, according to Harrison, that functionality may well appear in an OS update, presumably based on whether users actually express a desire for it or not.
Shop Till You Drop
Friends are one part of the equation. The other part is the PlayStation Store, which is where you'll be able to buy content, download demos, and manage any premium subscriptions you may have. This is basically the central hub for everything you do with the PS3 online, and it looks the part - again, Sony is making good use of the web browser built into the console, and the PlayStation Store looks quite similar to Apple's iTunes or, more appropriately, Sony's own Connect Music Store. Far from being just a simple list of things you can download, it's a really attractive interface which highlights key content and lets you filter all of the available bits and pieces according to your own preferences - so even when there are thousands of pieces of content on the store, which doesn't seem improbable, it'll still be easy to find what you want. The Store also utilises a shopping cart - so it's easy to browse through items, find the stuff you want, and then go to a checkout page where you proceed to make a sad face and empty the whole cart again, just like we do on Amazon about four times a week.
We're not going to talk in much depth about PlayStation Store, because what we saw was still undoubtedly being worked on frantically to prepare for the November launch. However, there are a few elements that it's worth talking about - the first of which is the Wallet, which lies at the heart of how you buy things on the Store. Unlike Nintendo and Microsoft's offerings, Sony doesn't hide the price of items behind an arbitrary "points" scheme - instead, everything simply lists a price in your local currency, so European types will see a Euro price, British people will see prices in Pounds Sterling, and so on. The Wallet, then, is basically your transaction centre - you put money into the Wallet, and then spend it in the store. Equally, you can set it up so that if you have associated accounts, for children for example, you can put a certain amount into their Wallets each month, giving them an allowance for how much can be spent on new content. Crucially, the Wallet is used for everything on the system - even for MMOG subscriptions to third parties. If it's on the PlayStation Network, you pay for it via Sony and the transaction with the third party is worked out elsewhere - so you're not expected to give credit card details out willy-nilly to everyone with content or services on the PS3.
Another interesting aspect of the Store, which Harrison first talked about at GDC last March, is the fact that while you'll be able to access all forms of content through the "generic store" that you view from the PS3 dashboard, games will also be able to have more specific stores which use the same interface, but display only downloads relevant to their content. Thanks to the web-based interface, games will be able to re-skin those stores to fit with their look and feel, and you'll access them directly from the in-game menu - which is a fairly minor touch, but a nice one nonetheless.
As to the content that will be available, Sony is still playing its cards close to its chest to some extent - but one thing the giant firm is clear on is that the PlayStation Store will grow to encompass more than just new game content and demos. Alongside the free and paid-for game content, the store will also play host to a wide range of new titles developed specifically for download (the first of which, fl0w, was shown off at TGS - dozens more PlayStation Store exclusive titles are being worked on around the world thanks to an initiative which Sony launched at GDC last year) - and as Ken Kutaragi revealed at TGS last month, it'll also be possible to buy PSone and PS2 classics you missed out on, as well as a selection of PSP games, from the PlayStation Store, and download them directly to your PS3.
It may not end there. Sony, after all, is one of the biggest music and movie companies in the world - and it already operates a music store, Connect. While no official plans to allow you to download music and movies directly to your PS3 have been announced, Sony insiders are adamant that that is on the roadmap for the service - so within a short space of time, the money in your Wallet could be used to buy any type of digital entertainment you fancy.
Brave New World
Once bitten, twice shy, the old saying goes - and based on that logic, Sony has some way to go before proving to people that it can do a comprehensive online gaming service. However, what we've seen is very promising. Account creation and management, buddy lists and various types of chat appear to be working just fine, the interface is simple and elegant, and the PlayStation Store, even at this early stage, looks like being one aspect of the service which will be a genuine improvement over Microsoft's offering, Xbox Live Marketplace - which is well-stocked, but has a terrible user interface that struggles to cope with the amount of content now available, and has only been marginally improved by recent updates.
There's still some way to go - and one area we're still intrigued by is what Sony will do about user profiles, which Microsoft revolutionised with Xbox 360 thanks to Gamer Points and Achievements. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're a big draw for many people, and how Sony will handle this aspect of its community remains to be seen.
However, for now we can say for certain that the online service is there - it exists and it's working, and according to Harrison, it will definitely launch right alongside the console this November. For those of us in Europe, of course, that probably means the rest of the world gets to iron out all the bugs before we see the console in March - there's always a silver lining on every dark cloud. Whatever your views on the console war may be, this is an excellent thing for gamers. Microsoft have a vast head-start over Sony online, but Sony's service has clearly learned many lessons from observing its rival, and in areas like the Store, is actually introducing new ideas and strong features which provide a genuine challenge. Head-start or not, Sony is now, finally, snapping at Microsoft's heels in the online space - and as the two giants inevitably launch into a race to take or maintain the lead in online services, the biggest winners of all will be gamers.
It should have been in it's eary stages way before the PS3 launched.
From what I here they have got their online shop spot on but the multiplayer features, friendlist and friend management is abismal. Some games don't even use your PNP tag at the mo, can't invite a friend to play unless they're already playing the game + other stuff. It leaves a lot to be desired.
Fair enough it's free but is that really an excuse for a shoddy service?
all games use PNP tag.
some games (resistance is only confirmed atm) uses a different friendlist although it doesnt use a different online tag between your pnp name and resistance name, resistance uses your pnp name, so yes while annoying if you do have a friend in resistance and you want to add him to your main friends list you just take his name from the resistance list and add to the main friendslist. so its only a minor annoyance atm and as the developer said, they can always patch it and make the friends lists the same in the future.
and so what if you cant invite a friend unless they are already playing the game, it isnt an essential feature, so what if xbox live has it, you pay for xbox live so you should expect additional features....
i find it funny people are calling it a shoddy service just because it is missing some features from xbox live when the fact is you pay for one service and not the other, it still is a great service early in its life and expect alot of these features to be patched in the future.
aslong as i can get trailers/demos for free, play matchmaking for free, have friendslists and download content when i want ill be happy, and the service offers all these.
I called it shoddy based on the following article. The guy seems to know his stuff but to be fair he does seem a little anti-Sony. But some of the stuff he says is kind of surpising...
Until recently, Sony has been remarkably quiet about the online capabilities of their long-awaited console. We are finally seeing the first concrete details of Sony’s online offering for the PS3. Over the next couple days I’ll be examining the pros and cons of Sony’s response to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. After a lackluster showing on the PS2, Sony has vowed to match Microsoft’s online service feature for feature, and offer exclusives of its own.
PS3 Online: The Good
Sony has recently unveiled the first in-depth look at the PlayStation Network. Members of the press corps were allowed to experiment with the Cross Media Bar (XMB) and the PlayStation Store. The XMB is reminiscent of the PSP interface, which comes as no surprise given expectations that the PSP and PS3 will be interoperable. You’ll eventually be able to download content from your PS3 to your PSP. This includes movies, demos, and even PS1 games.
Even a cursory look at the XMB reveals that Sony has put a lot of thought into the design. The interface is sleek and simple to use. The XMB lays out all of PS3’s most anticipated features the PS3 in easily accessible buttons: Videos, Music, Photos, Games, etc. The media bar also provides all the standard functionality of a friends list, allowing you to send messages, add friends, and so on. Unfortunately, the media bar cannot currently be accessed from within any game.
The PlayStation Store has been designed with the same level of care as the XMB. A consistent interface makes for easy store navigation; many would consider this is an improvement over MS’s hectic Marketplace environment. It is also obvious that the site is designed to take on the iTunes Store.
Although there are no official plans for this yet, it is possible that the store will eventually be accessible on the Internet as well as the PS3. The design of the store certainly suggests that this wouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish. Being able to access your account from work would allow you to download demos and videos so that they are ready for you by the time you get home.
Sony also provides a web browser at no extra cost. It remains to be seen who exactly Sony is targeting with the web browser (perhaps the WebTV demographic), but it is consistent with their goal of making the PS3 a computer. I personally can’t see why you’d ever want to browse the web without a mouse or keyboard, but the PS3 also caters for that with their support of all USB standard devices. You can plug in any USB keyboard, and it’ll be instantly recognized.
Sony’s best new feature is their Electronic Distribution Initiative (EDI). At first, the severe shortage of information on this initiative was alarming. It came across as a hackneyed, half-thought out response to Microsoft’s Live Arcade service. However, more information has slowly trickled out in the past few weeks, and the EDI could turn out to be Sony’s brightest feature in the next-gen race.
EDI is not just a place for game developers to regurgitate old titles with slightly retooled graphics, nor just a dumping ground for casual games. It is a honest attempt at creating a space for indie games in the console world. EDI has been quietly working with a number of teams to come out with smaller scale games which would benefit from such an approach (“about 40” exclusive titles). One has to only look as far as David Jaffe’s latest offering to contemplate the possibilities of such a system. Yes, Sony still has a long way to go to fulfill the potential of EDI, but what we’ve seen so far is very promising.
Finally, Sony’s downloadable service in general seems very promising (EDI being just one part). Game demos and trailers will be available for free. You’ll be able to download PS1 games to play on your PSP (and one day on your PS3). Players will be able to access new game content and casual games at varying costs. It wouldn’t be a surprise either to eventually see downloadable movies and music available in the PlayStation Store.
All in all, Sony is making a very decent attempt at creating a competitor to the Xbox Live service. However, not everything is perfect with the PS3 online and tomorrow I will explore some of the problems surrounding Sony’s strategy.
PS3 online: The Bad
Nothing is perfect, and Sony’s PlayStation Network is no exception. Not once did I mention multiplayer games in the previous piece. In fact, if you scour the internet, you’ll find very little mention of it anywhere; there is very little real information on the multiplayer support of the launch titles available out there.
The fact is, in its quest to surpass Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, Sony may have overlooked the most fundamental reason for online connectivity: playing online games with others.
Sony has carefully avoided all discussion on this topic, save for mentioning that Resistance: Fall of Man will support 40 players. The developers themselves are the only ones to have made any comments on the service provided. Resistance will offer up a full suite of online support, including “its own buddy list, clan registry, in-game messaging and chat services”. This is unfortunately damning for Sony as none of the PlayStation Network’s functionality is integrated into the game. The game’s buddy list, and Sony’s are two completely distinct entities.
The developers explain that Sony did not deliver the online libraries in a timely fashion. However, the author suggests that Sony never planned on providing a fully featured online system. He implies that Sony has only recently realized their mistakes and attempted to correct it. As we’ll see tomorrow, this assessment is actually closer to the truth than one might expect.
The reality is that the friend’s list support that Sony have provided in their libraries is terrible. From within a game, you are notified when your friends sign on and sign off (with a nice translucent overlay)…and that’s about it. Developers have no way of interfacing with this list in any useful manner. You can’t find out if your friends are watching a movie, surfing the net or playing another game. If you send them an invite, you have to hope they sign on to the same game you’re playing before they’ll even see it. Furthermore, there is currently no functionality to even “accept” the invite. It’s just a message to come join a game; it won’t actually take you to the game. Developers have to deal with that problem themselves.
Meanwhile, online stores are also proving to be a headache for developers. Nothing except rudimentary access to the Sony Wallet has been provided. Originally, these stores were only supposed to be skinned versions of the Sony Store. Developers are now expected to write their own in-game stores from scratch. While, you can still browse for a specific game’s content in the main Sony Store, I anticipate very few games will sport an online store, at least until Sony drastically improves their libraries. Sony needs to provide a complete commerce API to the its developers.
Several other games are having trouble with the PS3 online. Sega’s Virtua Tennis and Tony Hawk Project 8 have both dropped online support for the PS3. More precisely, they announced they never intended to support an online mode on the PS3. Of course, this is just PR speak meant to minimize embarrassment to Sony. We should ignore the fact that both games will still have multiplayer support on the Xbox 360. All this just screams to users: if you want a solid online experience, buy a Xbox 360. How embarrassing for Sony.
Virtua Tennis is not even due till March 2007. Does Sega really have no confidence in the online market for Sony’s console? Or are they just minimizing their risks?
Other games are also conspicuously hushed about their online support. MotorStorm will apparently not have online support in Japan. The games F.E.A.R. And Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Las Vegas all have extensive coverage of their online modes for the Xbox 360, but nary a word is mentioned in regards to the PS3.
Currently, there is also no default headset support, no voice support on the PS3. This feature has been a TRC requirement for every online game for the Xbox. Let me rephrase that: since the launch of Xbox Live (over 4 years ago), every online game released had to support voice chat. And of course, Microsoft provided libraries. If developers want to support voice chat on the PS3 right now, they have to implement it themselves.
The following quote from the developers of Marvel Nemesis (a PS3 launch title), best illustrates the situation:
“Unfortunately for PS3 owners, there is no headset support for this game. Feel free to give Sony the stink eye if you don’t like it.”
Other problems that developers are experiencing is the lack of basic access to the GUI interface used by the Sony PS3 OS. Unlike the Xbox, developers cannot position the overlays of the Sony GUI messages themselves; they have to work around them instead.
In online services, multiplayer support is the glue that holds everything together. You can not offer all the complimentary online services without first offering the core service of multiplayer support. Furthermore, these complimentary services (like a friends list, and downloadable content) need to be well integrated with all the online games.
Several areas of the PS3 online service look extremely polished, especially the cross media bar. In stark contrast, other areas look very incomplete, and not very well thought out. I get the distinct impression that Sony plans to patch a lot of this functionality in over time. The system is not ready for prime-time now. What will consumers think in the meantime? What about the games that have to launch with these sub-par libraries?
Sony has made serious in-roads in the online market with the PS3, but still falls short in several key areas, especially in developer support. The multiplayer support is still closer to the PS2 experience than Xbox Live. Things will have to improve in the long run. Please join us tomorrow, where I will examine why things have gone so awry for Sony.
After exploring the good and bad of Sony’s PlayStation Network, it’s time to explore the ugly side of their online strategy: development support. This particular subject has not been made public except for a few rumblings here and there. It’s time to cut to the chase, and actually discuss the difficulties developers have encountered trying to work with Sony’s online libraries. These issues are important to highlight because they have had (and will continue to have) direct consequences on the quality of online/multiplayer games, and end-user’s experience.
PS3 Online: The Ugly
Unfortunately for Sony, we are no longer in the PS2 era, where everyone owned a PS2, and every developer had to create games for the console, if they hoped to turn a profit. Since Sony was so far ahead of the competition, it could provide terrible tools, and developers could do nothing about it. However, Microsoft has made significant inroads into the console market, and is now a very viable alternative to Sony for developers. Out of the three console makers, Microsoft provides by far the best development tools and support. Even Sony realizes this and has promised to provide better development tools this time around.
The problem remains that the PS3 is a difficult console to program due to the complex design of the hardware. Sony is a hardware company; its forte does not lie in software. As consequence, Sony’s development tools still lag far behind Microsoft’s.
To compound matters further, the Sony’s online support can only be described as poor to atrocious. Perhaps one day this will improve — after all, the console hasn’t even launched yet — but right now, the situation is dire. Sony seems to have taken the usual laissez-faire approach, which is to provide rudimentary online libraries and let individual developers figure out how they want to create lobbies, provide matchmaking abilities, track online scores and records. They are providing very few tools, and very little infrastructure.
The libraries seem to have been developed in a very ad-hoc way, with no clear goal in mind. For a long time, it seemed that developers were expected to implement every aspect of the online experience. Then Sony seemed to change their minds, and claim they would provide all the tools the developers would need. But then the promised features have rarely shown up. When they have appeared, it’s been in a very incomplete format, with the vague promise that things would be patched up in the future.
If the poor quality of the libraries wasn’t enough to hinder developers, then the repeated delays would definitely drive the nail in the coffin. Sony has been so slow in providing libraries and test hardware that it is surreal that it even expects developers to release launch games with online support. Even as recently as this summer, developers had still not received access to the Sony online test servers.
The development support in itself is already a serious issue, but it almost pales in comparison with the internal politics and friction that lies with the three major game divisions in Sony: Sony Japan (SCEI), Sony Europe (SCEE) and Sony America (SCEA). The creation of the worldwide games studios division was supposed to solve all the issues of internal divisiveness. Instead, it has done very little to stem the tide. No region seems to be clearly in charge of its own destiny. As a developer, you don’t produce a game for Sony, you produce it for one of the regions. If you release a game worldwide, then you must go through at least 3 separate QA processes. The worst problem is that each division has different strategies and different requirements, especially when it comes to online functionality.
Instead of working together to offer an online system and APIs to rival Xbox Live, they’ve each gone on their own developing their own systems, undercutting one another. Each region has a different idea of how important online support is, and whether or not games need to produce downloadable content, or have online support available at launch. For example, no Sony game can launch in North America without online support, whereas Sony Japan will accept games without it as long as they can be patched in later.
This disparity can be useful to cater to the different markets and peculiarities of each region. It becomes problematic for the developers who have to deal with conflicting demands. It just makes their lives more difficult.
The problems between different regions should not be understated. Sony Japan always has final say in any discussion, but different regions have trouble even communication with each other. Sony Japan rarely discusses anything with the two other divisions, let alone keeping them updated on what is in the pipeline. They just like to hand down unilateral decisions every once in a while. Sony Japan wants to continue to run the show, even though Sony America is a lot more experienced in online support.
As a relevant example, SCEA had apparently developed a complete online solution for the PS3 (to put it on par with Xbox Live for multiplayer support, ranking, achievements, etc). Sony Japan reportedly came in and cancelled the whole thing, simply saying, “no, you have to use the libraries we’ve put together”.
Perhaps what is most alarming is that several games scheduled for the US market have announced that they will be using Xfire as a middleware solution for their online support. The deal between Sony and Xfire comes at an extremely late stage in the run-up to the launch. It is clearly a move born out of desperation. It’s is a last minute decision to use middleware to ensure that games will launch with online support in the US, and it speaks volumes on Sony’s own online support (or lack thereof).
Xfire is simply a stand-in for the entire matchmaking and multiplayer side of the service Sony was supposed to offer (never mind that Xfire offers messaging as well). The following quote is most telling as to the gap in service in Sony’s offering.
“We support the PlayStation Network friends, matchmaking, and messaging service, and we’ve also integrated Xfire,” said Sites. “So you can use both, or you can choose to use Xfire, or just the PlayStation Network. We’ve integrated them so they work well together.”
The lack of a consistent system to offer multiplayer support will lead to vastly different levels of quality across different games. In comparison, Microsoft has only ever allowed one publisher to handle their own multiplayer service on Xbox Live: EA. And judging by how poorly consumers are responding to EA’s online support, EA is paying a steep price for its arrogant belief that they can always do better.
The route Sony has taken so far will only further fracture its online community into several smaller communities, unable to talk to one another, or interact with each other effectively.
When you speak to developers privately, they express a stunning level of frustration. Repeated delays in the delivery of online APIs, delays in coming-up with online testing kit, incomplete or missing libraries, promised features that are never delivered. The list goes on and on. They have to deal with the bloat of the OS, which eats up nearly 100 MB of memory (and one SPU), and provides very little functionality to the game. In comparison, the OS for the Xbox is rumored to only use up 3.5 MB. (Correction: an anonymous poster suggests that the Xbox reserves 32 MB for the OS. Please see the comments below.)
“At present, however, there’s no system for actually reading or responding to messages while you’re still in the game, as the operating system doesn’t take resources away from games in order to do that - however, according to Harrison, that functionality may well appear in an OS update, presumably based on whether users actually express a desire for it or not.”
It’s surprising that the OS can take so much memory, and without being able to provide a mechanism for reading or responding to messages. Another example of bloat: if you want to draw the OS keyboard in game, it will use up a further 16 MB of memory. The OS will eat up another 16 MB of memory on top of the 100 MB it’s already using up; the amount of memory used by the OS is simply ludicrous.
I personally question Sony’s goal with their online service. It comes across as a purely money grabbing effort. Of course they are a business, and will seek to make as much money as possible. However, the only bright spot is the PlayStation Store, which is hoped to become the center for millions of micro-transactions. Every thing appears to be geared around the moneymaking side of the service. Meanwhile, the actual user online experience will suffer. It is as if Sony’s management failed to see the obvious fact that a poor multiplayer experience will not generate more sales in their online store.
As to the notion that - unlike Xbox Live with its subscription-based charges- to the fact that the service is free, the reality is that you get what you pay for. The multiplayer experience on the PS3 will pale in comparison to Xbox Live. The only games that will do well are the ones using Xfire, or those where the developer has invested a lot of their time creating a fun multiplayer experience.
It seems that Sony hasn’t actually learned their lesson from their days supporting developers on the PS2. Perhaps they will only realize their mistake once they have been knocked off their perch at the top. Let’s hope it’s not too late by then.
A short follow-up piece has been posted addressing some of the main feedback here.
PS3 online service goes live
Linear Mode
